Kille (card game)
card game using special deck, originally medieval French gambling game
Kille (pronounced /ɕɪlːɛ/ or /kɪlːɛ/), also called Harlequin, Cambio, Campio, Kambio or Kamfio, is a game played with special playing cards, dating from a medieval French gambling game. In Sweden, the game had its heyday during the 1750s, but it is one of the oldest card games still played.
History
The French gambling game of Coucou was invented in France around 1500 and spread across Central Europe. In the late 17th century, an Italian manufacturer produced a deck of cards adapted for the game. The game was named Cuccú after its highest card. Cuccú had 38 cards and two cards of each denomination (thus 19 unique denominations). Eleven of the cards in each suite were numeral cards, numbered 0-10. The other cards were picture cards, two of which – the Bucket and the Masque – ranked lower than the numerals. Five of the cards were ranked higher: the Inn, Cat, Horse, Guard, and Cuckoo (highest). The nineteenth card, the Fool, the precursor of Kille's Harlequin, was outside the rankings and its value was determined by the game played and could vary during the same game.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kille (card game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.